Ex-OpenAI’s Leopold Aschenbrenner bets big on crypto miners for his $13.6B AI play

Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher who became known for warning that China could steal advanced AI models, sharply increased his bets on bitcoin miners and AI infrastructure companies while building multibillion-dollar positions against semiconductor stocks.

In his latest 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Aschenbrenner expanded disclosed equity exposure from $5.5 billion at the end of 2025 to $13.67 billion by March 31.

Some of his largest long positions were tied to companies supplying electricity, data center capacity and compute infrastructure to the AI industry. The filing disclosed stakes in bitcoin miners and related infrastructure firms including IREN, Core Scientific (CORZ), Riot Platforms (RIOT), CleanSpark (CLSK), Bitfarms (BITF), Bitdeer (BTDR) and Hive Digital (HIVE).

Those companies have increasingly repositioned themselves as suppliers of power and high-performance computing infrastructure for AI workloads, not just cryptocurrency mining. Their existing access to energy contracts and large-scale facilities has drawn investor interest as AI data center demand rises.

Aschenbrenner also disclosed large positions in Bloom Energy (BE), SanDisk (SNDK) and cloud provider CoreWeave (CRWV). Together, the portfolio suggests he still expects long-term growth in the physical infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence.

At the same time, he opened $7.46 billion worth of put options against major semiconductor companies and chip-related exchange-traded funds. The largest bearish positions included a $2.04 billion put against the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, a $1.57 billion Nvidia (NVDA) put and more than $1 billion in puts tied to Oracle (ORCL) and Broadcom (AVGO).

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